Editorials

Linux Gaming

Since this group will be composed of representatives from the development companies involved with Linux gaming they will be able to discuss issues regarding Linux gaming. Instead of a disorganized collection of Linux developers around the world screaming with their fans at certain companies to make their drivers better or in some cases to even release drivers for Linux, this group will be able to approach these developers with statistics and with a professional demeanor and say, "we represent 5 companies and 500,000 units of sold games last year," we would like to work with you to help improve "insert issue here." Initially, this could be used to improve the state of drivers in the Linux community, but later it could be leveraged to resolve other issues that will inevitably appear in a cutting edge community such as game development.

What I am suggesting with my discussion of these three issues is that the industry has reached the first step in its journey towards maturity. We Linux gamers now have our games, the players in the Linux gaming world have earned name recognition among their peers in the PC world, we have drivers of varying states for most of the gaming related hardware, and we also have several excellent distributions of Linux for every skill level which are beginning to ship with the latest and greatest interfaces that rival those of even the Macintoshes. Now that we have reached this first stage we must look into the future and determine what we can do and what we want to do.

Each of the three issues above can be easily resolved now that we have companies willing to develop Linux games and gamers willing to support those companies. The task now is to grow the community so that it builds on itself and expands the number of people who are not just Linux users who play games, but gamers who use Linux.